


Drowning

by StraightForEren



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Caring Armin, Character Study, Extended Metaphors, F/M, Fluff, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Injured Sasha, Light Angst, Metaphors, One Shot, POV Alternating, Romance, Short One Shot, Sleepy Cuddles, can get a little confusing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26854054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StraightForEren/pseuds/StraightForEren
Summary: "In the midst of all that disaster of fake smiles and little games, she was afraid of the future and of those things that we do not comprehend, but we know are there."-"Everyone was too busy in their own hurricanes to notice mine. Only someone as insightful as him, as selfless as him, could notice those things I kept under my bed."
Relationships: Armin Arlert & Sasha Blouse, Armin Arlert/Sasha Blouse, AruSasha
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!!💙💚. Leaving this short little arusasha one shot here😄. This couple is so underrated, I wish more people made more content of them💜. 
> 
> English isn't my first language so if someone notices any grammar mistakes, feel free to correct me💟.
> 
> Enjoy, I guess;

Armin was water. He reminded me of the movement of water in an ocean, the waves moving from one side to the other, calmly, drearily. At times, the sky above them would get stormy, and the waves would crash into each other, angrily, desperate.

And when he cried, I felt it. Like water moving between my legs and arms, tangible, but so complex and unattainable.

He was water. Rain during a sunset when he smiled. At the very least, bittersweet. He knew that we had no opportunities to live and that this life, regardless of pain, had to be enjoyed.

He smelled like the smell of wet soil after rain, and wet sand after nightfall.

His eyes were an ocean. Different shades of blue dancing with each other, perhaps fighting for the starring role. And it was like swimming when you looked into his eyes, I longed to jump into those waters and if necessary, to drown in them, despite my fears and instincts.

Having the privilege of sitting next to him during this expedition was satisfying to say the least.

He was watching me from afar, as if asking me to be careful, perhaps begging. In front of us was titan Eren, practicing moving a couple of trees.

Or at least that's what I thought the poor bunch of meat was trying to do.

We were there ... for some reason. I hadn't been paying attention to Hange-san's speech when she explained our role, but I was sure that Armin would remember it, so I wasn't worried. Almost not worried. A part of me had a bad forboding.

"Don't worry. We're going to do it right." He pronounced, and I had to blink a few times to realize what he had said.

"Eh? _What_ are we going to do right?"

Too late. A tree was falling in our direction.

\------

It was nighttime.

I was lying on a small, narrow bed, with a yellow blanket resting on top of me. The room around me was very messy, it was probably Hange's lab. It was brown, but the walls were covered in paint of different colors. The floor was a mess, crumpled papers everywhere and experiment tubes in the corners.

To my left, there was a small window, through which the tiny, but still there, moonlight could enter. The sky was full of clouds, so there wasn't as much lighting to hold onto, anyway.

I heard someone move to my right, which triggered my instinctive senses, robbing me of a little scared sound.

It was Armin.

"Hey hey it's me, don't worry ..."

I sighed, trying to sit up to appreciate his figure properly.

"Don't get up, you are hurt." He said, and as if his words were a prediction, as soon as I moved my leg a little, I felt a pain that rendered me immobile. I immediately regretted it.

"What an idiot!" I exclaimed out loud, referring to myself. I felt his hand on my sore shoulder, like he was trying to show his support to me, or maybe he felt guilty.

"Sorry. This was my fault." I blinked in surprise. _What the hell do you mean? If I'm hurt, it's because of my own idiocy, I didn't pay attention and that's what brought me here!_ \- I thought.

"Don't tell me that, anything but that. I was the one who put myself in this situation!" I expressed to him, but his face remained the same, with the same guilt showing itself clear to me.

That's how he was, always taking blame, taking responsibility. I didn't know exactly how that felt, my goals and actions were dictated by Captain Levi and sometimes Mikasa. I reserved myself to obey orders, although sometimes I was a rebel myself and stole food, it seemed better to let myself be carried away by the tide.

But not Armin. He moved the tide. As if he were the moon and the rest, the water, he took the responsibility of guiding us. Even Commander Erwin had given him that mission.

He was probably feeling tired, with all the things he had to do.

"Don't worry, 'Min," I tried to tell him, "I will get better soon." Maybe he managed to see the determination in my eyes, because it was easy for him to believe me once I became insistent. He knew me very well, that I knew.

"Do you want me to get you a glass of water?"

\--------

Sasha was warm. She wasn't _burning_ fire, the kind that sticks to your skin and snatches, tears away and takes everything with it. The one that torments and wherever it appears, it distributes pain and agony whenever it wishes.

No, no, Sasha was a more of a passive heat. In a way, looser, the kind that travels with the breeze, carrying tree leaves and a promise of a new day with it. She was the warmth in an embrace when winter became unbearable and you had to do everything to survive. She was the warmth of a freshly cooked plate of food, which feels good and is almost a miracle, a gift that this cruel world every now and then gives us.

Her eyes weren't a pair of determined, angry flames. Rather, her eyes were sparkling, twindling brightness, resembling the stars in the sky. A memory that, although our reality was cruel and broke us into a thousand pieces, she was there. Light was there.

I would give _anything_ so that her warmth would never end. So that she continued to give us her smile every morning at breakfast, her jokes accompanying us on each of our trips.

But she was temporary, like everything and everyone. Maybe that was why I was so terrified of having her so close to falling from my arms.

"Here."

Sasha took the glass I offered her with shaking hands and a grateful smile.

"If you want me to go, I can go."

I felt guilty to the core, I was so close to her fire turning off, leaving our lives. I should have been careful, I should have warned her earlier. I should have thought faster, sooner, I couldn't afford to lose someone I treasured... not again. With how easy it was to lose her, I shouldn't have trusted myself so much.

"Stay."

It was almost like an order.

\-------

"Stay."

It was an order.

I knew that no matter how much time passed, every day I was going to feel worse. Only 1 day had passed and I already missed running through the woods, jumping on top of my friends, soaring through the trees and feeling the wind against my face.

I needed that freedom. Perhaps other people like Erwin or Eren understand freedom as a birdcage. We are inside, and everything we've done so far is not freedom, but an illusion.

But that didn't matter to me. I called freedom what was close to me, however little it was. A plate of food, a glass of water, a walk at night, maybe Armin, even if he wasn't mine.

And that freedom at that time was quite short for me. If I stayed on that bed for another week, I was sure I was going to explode. And Armin knew.

"Let's play something." He said, having my absolute attention in a few seconds

"Play what? Because I can't move." I expressed to him, as if he was not aware of it.

Armin got up from his seat, took a notebook from Hange's desk and with it, a pen.

"I'm going to write a word, give you clues, and you're going to guess."

I thought about it for a moment, --- "It's not fair! You know more words than I do, I can barely read!" I grumbled at him, genuinely upset. It was as if he was playing a bad joke on me.

"No, don't worry. I'll use words that I know _you_ know and that mean something to both of us." I shook my head, still unconvinced by the nonsense the blonde was suddenly hanging out with. "Come on, it will be fun!" Still not convinced. "Or do you prefer to spend the night here alone?"

I sighed, knowing that I had already lost. "OK." But the smile he gave me once I accepted, that had been worth it. Definitely.  


\-----

I thought of something interesting to both of us. Sasha was a bit complicated. Many people (perhaps even herself) would describe her as overly simple. Captain Levi once managed to call her "Painfully careless".

But I could see beyond that, beyond his silly jokes and childish antics. I could see that woman who had been through so much, who had seen rejection and death as many times as I had. Someone who, in the midst of all that disaster of fake smiles and little games, was afraid of the future and of those things that we do not comprehend, but we know are there.

She was not afraid of death, but she was afraid of being forgotten. Oblivion. Maybe that's why she tried to get attached to everyone and win our trust so fast. Maybe deep down she longed to be part of the stories we told our children, if she didn't survive by our side by then. And I thought, for all those reasons, I had the perfect word to start the game.

\--------

"Don't tell me it's potato. If it's potato, I swear I'll get up and kill you."

He knew I wasn't serious, but a part of me would be quite upset if the blond tried to tease me like that.

"No ..." He said, trying not to laugh, "It's not potato. It's something else."

 _But what the hell could it be?_ \- I thought. Of all the things Armin had in common with me, it was difficult for me to find one that was easy to put in a single word.

"Are you _sure_ it's not potato?" I asked him, repeatedly.

He giggled and looked down at his notebook, presumably looking for a clue. "It is something that interests us both, next to surviving."

I put my hand on my face, completely confused. _Was it killing titans?_ - I kept thinking.

"It starts with an L."

\-----  
(Timeskip)  
\------

"Are you serious, Armin, really?!"

He was a little disappointed, as if my words had disrespected some of his cats.

""Legacy"?!" I exclaimed.

He looked down at his notebook.

"Yes. Legacy. Because you want no one to forget you, and I want no one to forget what I have achieved."

We fell in a deep, awkward silence. He was absolutely right. It even seemed quite curious to me that he did not seek to be remembered for him, but rather his actions and those conclusions he had reached to.

Maybe it was his low self-esteem, accompanying him like a razor-toothed devouring monster, chewing on his brain, telling him how to feel about his accomplishments, that he had to be ashamed of them, that he had to hide from himself.

He was so important to the fights we were leading, we didn't need him to pull back, and maybe every time we pushed him forward, he buried himself in his own insecurities and loathe.

Armin needed a break, maybe a hug, maybe a kiss, and a cat on his lap.

"Thank you." I told him, finally.

His eyes went wide, as if my words were the last thing he expected to come out of my mouth right then.

"What did you say?" He still seemed lost, convinced that he had imagined my answer.

"Thank you. No one had noticed that."

And it was true, only he had noticed that kind of things about me. It's not like I tried to hide them or throw them aside, it's more like everyone already had their own problems, their own demons. Everyone was too busy in their own hurricanes to notice mine. Only someone as insightful as him, as selfless as him, could notice those things I kept under my bed. He smiled at me, as if to say "you're welcome", and we continued with the game.

\--------

"Loneliness." It took a couple of moments to process her words.

"Don't look at me like that, we're both alone." She kept saying. "We have friends, but we are alone." And I knew she was referring to Mikasa and Eren. To Jean and Connie.

Those who were so busy being together with each other that they had made us the third wheel.

Anyway, everyone knew that Connie was gay.

"Come here." She told me.

"What?"

"Come here." She gestured to the bed she was in, where there was a small space that could fit one more person.

"I do not want to be alone." Her words meant so much in so few syllables, they spoke to a part of me that was unaware of the possibility of a company so open to the errors and imperfections that I possessed.

"Are you sure?" I asked her, trembling. "I don't want to force you."

She rolled her eyes with a small smile, inviting me to stop hindering and just come closer. And when I got next to her, she was warm. I felt like those nights, in front of a campfire, snuggled in the arms of my grandparents while they told me their adventure stories.

It was home. For me.

\-------

I fell asleep before I knew if he had been able to do it, and I remember that the last thing I saw, before wrapping myself in the arms of Morpheus.

His eyes. Calming me, like water from a lake, hugging me tenderly. A promise, perhaps, although I was never good at understanding indirect messages.

I felt peace. Although the monsters that gave us life were still out there, roaring through the trees, perhaps having tea with their friends. Although that next day we could die at the hands of a beast. I decided to jump into those unknown and distant waters. Without fear of sinking, without fear of strange fish, without tension, without fear.

Free.

And maybe, drowning.

**Author's Note:**

> Whew! What a ride. Thanks for reading!! This was a little over the place but I'm glad I did it💞.


End file.
